


In Memoriam

by valda



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fanon, Gen, M/M, because why not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-10
Updated: 2016-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-19 13:05:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,871
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5968309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valda/pseuds/valda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>General Hux has a secret. Kylo is sure of it.</p><p>(Kylo discovers a reason to be intrigued by the ever-irritating general.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Memoriam

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chickadddddd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chickadddddd/gifts).



General Hux has a secret. Kylo is sure of it.

The general is not weak-minded. He’s many other things—arrogant, self-righteous, proud, petulant—but his mind is strong. Kylo could read him, of course, as he has read so many others. But there is no way to read him without him knowing he’s being read. (There is also possibly no way to read him without it hurting, though Kylo is less concerned about that.)

If Kylo read Hux, Hux would not be able to trust him, and they would not be able to work together. The Supreme Leader explained this before sending Kylo here. One day Kylo will be free to take what he wants whenever he wants, to pluck secrets from minds like overripe fruit, but now, while order is still being established, he must be patient. He must hold back until he no longer needs men such as Hux.

Sometimes it is not necessary to read people. Sometimes their emotions roll from their bodies in powerful waves that Kylo can’t help but experience. It is easy, with those people, to learn what he wants to learn, even if he can’t perform an interrogation-level probe.

But General Hux’s mind is strong, and his deeper emotions—the ones beneath the sneering disdain and frustrated rivalry betrayed by the general’s tight eyes and curling lip—remain closed to Kylo. Masked, as Kylo masks himself.

It was not Hux’s mind that first betrayed him, but his strange actions. Hux is a creature of habit—he would call this “discipline”—and always rises at the same time, eats at the same times, exercises at the same time, stalks the bridge at the same times, each and every day. One day he deviated from his exacting routine, and the change was like a stumble that tripped up the natural order of the universe. He was late for breakfast, and when he did arrive he chose caf instead of tea and drank it all in a hurried gulp.

Something had happened, and when Kylo remarked that the general had best regain command of himself lest morale start to flag, that _something_ caused just the slightest shadow of Hux’s true feelings to bubble up to the surface, to ripple out toward Kylo’s waiting mind. In that fleeting moment of weakness, Kylo knew.

Hux is worried. Worried beyond his normal eagerness to prove himself, to please Leader Snoke, to destroy the Resistance and carve his name into the stars. It is a personal worry.

Kylo is intrigued.

For the next few days, Hux is back to his routine, and it is as if the aberration never occurred. Nearly a full week passes before the next incident, out on the snowy surface of Starkiller Base.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you out here without your little hat, General,” Kylo drawls, cocking his head to one side.

Hux stiffens, turning his face away, toward the ongoing construction of the superweapon. “I had no idea you had such an interest in my wardrobe, Ren.”

“I hope your ears aren’t cold.” Kylo can’t help himself; the general’s unflappable exterior has been flapped, and it’s entirely too amusing.

“ _Is_ there something you wanted, Ren?” Hux stands at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back, face forward. The tips of his ears are pink.

“Nothing at all, General.”

More days pass. Kylo is increasingly bored with waiting and curious to the point of frustration. _What_ is Hux hiding? What has him so flustered? Back on the _Finalizer_ , Kylo storms up to Phasma. “ _What_ is wrong with General Hux?” he demands.

“Wrong?” the stormtrooper captain asks. “I haven’t noticed anything unusual…”

“He was late for breakfast. He forgot his hat. He—”

Kylo suddenly realizes that these incidents are exceptionally minor. Has he blown it all out of proportion? But no, he’d felt it. That momentary rush of worry, rolling over Hux like nausea.

“He is worried about something that is not our mission,” Kylo intones. “The Force has shown me. And the Force will show me what it is.”

In his chambers, Kylo settles into a deep meditation. He is not so desperate as to enter Hux’s mind against his Supreme Leader’s orders, but he opens himself to the living Force, channels the invisible connections between all things, follows them to Hux and around Hux and beyond Hux. Follows them to the future, perhaps, or to the past—whatever the Force wills him to see in this moment.

He sees a man, grave, tall, strong. Powerful in a way beyond the physical, but powerful physically too. The man looms, charges, swings, and distantly, Kylo feels someone else’s pain.

He sees a woman, also strong, and perhaps cold, and then she is shouting, and then she is dead. The Force reveals nothing more.

Kylo emerges from his meditation with a restless, dissatisfied sort of energy that sends him stalking through the Star Destroyer, stormtroopers and technicians scattering in his wake. His agitated charge stops at the door to Hux’s office. He palms the comm.

“Yes?” comes the general’s mild, disinterested voice.

“It’s Ren,” Kylo growls.

There is a pause before the door slides open. Hux is seated at his desk, scrolling through information on a datapad. He flicks his eyes up to Kylo’s. “Yes?” he says again.

Kylo realizes his fists are clenched. He carefully forces his hands to relax. Then, “What’s wrong with you?” he asks, apparently having used all his mindfulness to straighten his fingers. He scowls and is thankful for the mask.

Hux sets the datapad on the desk and leans back in his chair, crossing his legs and lacing his fingers together over his knee. “I beg your pardon,” he says, and his lip is only barely not curling.

This reaction settles Kylo; he laughs. “What. Is wrong. With you,” he says. “You’ve been off, General. It’s possible I’m the only one who’s noticed. But perhaps not. Perhaps you’d best see about fixing whatever problem you’re having.”

“The Empire destroyed most Jedi records, and we’ve destroyed many more, so I’m afraid I didn’t realize the Force gave one enhanced daydream ability,” Hux scoffs.

“Don’t lie to me, General,” Kylo warns. He leans in, flattening his palms against Hux’s desk.

Hux’s gaze goes steely. “There is nothing _wrong_ with me, Ren. I expect you’re simply bored and frustrated, unable as you are to hunt down the last of the Jedi, and you’ve concocted this—”

Kylo cannot hurt General Hux. He needs General Hux. Kylo wants to shut General Hux up, but General Hux is important to the First Order. For now.

“—fantasy about there being something _wrong_ with me. Really, Ren, I’d no idea you found me so fascinating.” Hux reclines further in his chair, folds his hands behind his head. “Should I be flattered?”

Kylo’s eyes are drawn to the ever-so-slight twist of Hux’s lip, that perfect sneer that demonstrates no respect for Kylo’s power or position whatsoever. He wants to touch that sneer, to break it. To possess it. To devour it.

He finds himself licking his own lips as he forces himself upright, removing his hands from Hux’s desk.

“Was that all, Ren?” Hux lowers his arms, crossing them over his chest. “I’m rather busy, as you might expect.”

Kylo whirls toward the door. He’s taken two steps when he notices something odd. He is always dimly aware of the presences aboard the ship, bright spots in the Force scattered throughout the areas around him. One of them, he now realizes, is closer than he’d thought. It’s a small spark. It seemed distant. But it’s right behind the door leading from Hux’s office to his personal quarters.

Wordlessly, Kylo changes direction.

“Ren!” Hux snaps. “What do you think you’re—”

Kylo slaps the panel alongside the door to Hux’s bedroom. “Who are you hiding?” he thunders. “What are you playing at, General?”

“No one, there’s no one in there, for Tarkin’s sake,” Hux huffs, shoving himself up from his desk. “Those are my personal quarters and I’ll thank you to stay out—”

“Meow?”

Hux goes silent. Kylo is silent too, even as his head whips toward the sound. There’s movement in the doorway. A small shape emerges from the dimly-lit bedroom, rubbing its flank along Kylo’s boot and emitting a long, low purr.

It’s a cat.

It’s a cat, and it’s practically the same color as Hux’s hair, and Kylo is laughing.

“ _This_ ,” he says, and he bends down to pick the animal up.

“No,” Hux protests weakly.

“ _This_ is what you’ve been worried about. When you were late to breakfast. When your hat was missing. You’ve been distracted. By this.” He pauses as a name floats into his mind, a gift from the Force, a remnant of his earlier meditation. “Millicent?” he says slowly.

Hux is frozen in place, lips compressed into the thinnest imaginable line, jaw clenched in such a way that tendons stand out on his neck. He has rather remarkable cheekbones, Kylo finds himself musing.

The cat does not struggle. Kylo cradles her in one arm. She rubs her face against his chest, so he offers her his fingers.

“You,” Hux says, finally. “My cat.”

Kylo tips his head back, gazing at Hux through the curved slit in his mask. “Yes,” he says, though Hux has said nothing particularly sensible.

They are quiet for some time. The cat brushes her whiskers against Kylo’s fingertips, indifferent to their stalemate. Finally Kylo steps forward, sets her down on Hux’s desk.

“No,” Hux moans, “I’m trying to _train_ her—” He snatches up the cat before she can bat his datapad to the floor with her paw.

Kylo regards the pair with amusement. “Millicent,” he says again. Once again Hux stiffens. The general drops his gaze to the cat. Kylo shrugs at him. “You’re an officer,” he says. “A commanding officer of this fleet, no less. What does it matter if you have a pet?”

Hux’s lips twist. “I am not fool enough to give my subordinates a path to—to strike at me.”

“Yet here she is,” Kylo says. Hux’s cheeks are pink. Kylo shrugs again, crosses his arms. “No harm will come to Millicent while I am aboard this ship.” It intrigues him, the way Hux reacts to his cat’s name. He wants to say it again, and he does. “Millicent.”

“Yes, you’ve divined my cat’s name somehow, very good,” Hux snaps at him. “Was that quite all, Ren?”

Kylo laughs again. “Fine,” he says. He turns, less dramatically this time, and makes for the door. “Have a good evening, General.”

The next morning there is a command staff meeting with Phasma and several other officers. Hux welcomes them all into his office, inviting them to sit before rounding his desk to settle in his own chair. As soon as he is seated, an orange tabby leaps up into his lap; without looking, without even blinking, Hux begins to stroke the cat. “Lieutenant Mitaka,” he says, ignoring the looks of confusion from his officers, “I believe you have an intelligence report?”

Kylo, having eschewed the comfort of a chair, looms in the corner. He smiles invisibly behind his mask, watching the cat and pondering the meaning of “Millicent”.

**Author's Note:**

> Like many others, I was highly amused by the idea of General Hux owning a cat. It makes for a bit fluffier of a story than I expected for my first kylux fic, but oh well!


End file.
